Mahjong
by windwhisprer
Summary: .::Oneshot, no parings::. After the journey west, the ikkou attempt to find solace in their favorite game. But a game cannot shield them from reality forever.


**Mahjong **

The four men had somehow found solace in the game of Mahjong over the years. It had given them peace, calmed their minds, and allowed them to think rationally. Whenever they had time on the road, they played it. It gave them all a sense of unity while still being on opposite sides. They relished in it.

However, once the journey west had ended, the young men had all gone on with their lives. Goku went back with Sanzo to the temple; Gojyo and Hakkai were still living together. They all continued, albeit shakily, with the lives they had left behind five years before.

It was difficult. At first, it had been almost like introducing a cripple how to walk again. Goku was often anxious, fidgeting more than usual. Often when he and Sanzo got into fights, Goku would take off for days at a time and live with Hakkai and Gojyo. Even there the youth was not placated. It was the unity that he missed. Being with one party or the other didn't help him. Sanzo too, was having trouble adjusting. He couldn't sleep at night, and was constantly on edge, constantly restless. Gojyo fell back into old habits of gambling and whoring around with nameless women from town. There was no meaning to it, however.

Hakkai had the easiest time. He set himself up as a school-teacher, and taught night classes. He still seemed melancholy, not really there. Often he could be caught staring out a nearby window or playing solitaire. Often it was hard to make him pay attention to a conversation.

The ikkou met every week to play Mahjong together. Eventually, it dwindled, as Hakkai began to work more, Sanzo had better things to do, and Gojyo lost himself within the gambling and the liquor that went with it.

Goku seemed lost in the masses. All he had ever known was a childhood of playing around the temple, but he wasn't a child anymore. He couldn't just cause havoc. Occasionally, he filled jobs for the Three Aspects, but there weren't many jobs that Goku could fill. He wasn't a Sanzo priest.

Finally, ten years after the journey west ended, Goku had snapped. He grabbed Sanzo by the arms, and looked him right in the eye.

"You're miserable. I'm miserable. Hakkai and Gojyo are miserable. Face it Sanzo, we're road rats. We need to get out of here."

Surprisingly, Sanzo agreed. The pair had fled the Temple in the middle of the night and made their way to Gojyo and Hakkai's. The two men were already packed; it appeared that Goku had already gotten to them.

They started up Hakuryuu, and drove.

As they made their way out into the darkness, Goku had stood up in the backseat. He cupped his hands over his mouth, and yelled into the night sky.

"What the hell are you yelling, monkey boy?" Gojyo gripped, pulling him back down in his seat.

Goku laughed as he slumped closer to his best friend, slinging an arm around his shoulders.

"I was telling the road that we're back."

The trip last two years. Eventually, however, things began to slow down. They found a small town to live in, still moved, from house to house, town to town, until the four young men finally stopped moving. Their days of adventure and travel were over. They may be road rats, but their story had been told.

Sanzo had been reaching forty by that time, and he no longer had the energy to keep up with Goku's thirty-five-but-still-incredibly-youthful stride. The group settled down, and started a life for each other.

The years ticked by like clockwork. After another five years, Sanzo had finally given in to the futility of his actions.

"I have to go back to Chang'an," he stated one morning. "I have to at least pass on my title as a Sanzo priest."

The others had volunteered to go with him, since it was a long walk, and Hakyruu had passed away a few years prior. Sanzo had declined, and made the walk back to Chang'an on his own. They didn't hear from him for another three years until Sanzo wrote them. It was a clipped letter, stating that there wasn't a way out and that he was stuck as Sanzo priest. It stated that he had to fulfill his duties and that he hoped to see them soon.

It hadn't sounded like Sanzo. Goku had stated right away that it sounded like one of the stuffy monks he grew up with. They all decided to make the trip back to Chang'an. It took a few months, and when they got there, Sanzo had stated that he was too busy to entertain them. He looked old, worn out. He was beginning to go grey and wrinkles pulled on the corners of his eyes.

The tired friends had sat down for a game of Mahjong. It was there that Sanzo explained the situation, and that the Three Aspects had forbade him from leaving the Temple, and he was to carry out his duty to his death. Goku had been furious.

"Since when did you just learn to lie down and accept defeat, Sanzo?" he'd barked at him. "Since when did you let other people decide how to live your life?"

Nobody had answered. Hakkai pulled Goku aside later and explained to him that Sanzo was old, that they were all getting older. They weren't twenty anymore. They couldn't challenge heaven and hell and die proud and honourable in the process.

"If you honestly believe that, Hakkai," Goku had told him angrily. "Then you've forgotten everything. You've forgotten who you are."

Goku left later that night.

He disappeared while the others were sleeping, and wasn't heard from for another ten years. Their ritualistic game of Mahjong ceased, since there was no fourth player to fill Goku's slot. Their Mahjong set was placed away, in the back of a closet in Gojyo and Hakkai's house, forgotten.

The three men carried on with their lives, all of them secretly wondering what had happened to Goku. The young man had disappeared entirely, and they hadn't heard anything from him in ten years. The light, the youth of their group was gone, and no one was sure what to do about it.

As the years passed, each wind had lost what made them who they were. The warm, embracing wind of the south, Hakkai, had lost his motherly touch. He had always been the warmth, the reason, and the peace of the group.

Gojyo, the spice of the group, the west wind, had grown dormant. He'd become habitual in his nature and lost the need to rile Sanzo up or break Hakkai out of his shell. He'd become as stale as the cigarettes he smoked.

Sanzo, as the north wind, the reason, the moral, the charisma of the group had suddenly found no reason to go on. The north wind, which could be frigid in his nature, sometimes cold, calloused, uncaring, had always offered some respite from their grief. He'd always been there, comforting in his routine. Now Sanzo had lost what little guidance he had, and began to drown himself in his sorrows.

It was the east wind, their youthful, guiding wind that the group missed. The east wind was the cornerstone, the foundation, the beginning. Without Goku, the others had seemed to shut down. They had lost all will to continue.

"It's my fault Goku left," Sanzo wrote in a letter to Hakkai. "If I hadn't been such a coward, he wouldn't have left us."

Not long after, Sanzo faked his death. He'd named a new heir shortly beforehand and made it appear as though he'd been murdered.

He'd written to Hakkai, stating that he was coming back home.

Hakkai had been happy. At least a part of their family would be together.

It was late one evening, while they were waiting for Sanzo's return, that Gojyo crept out of his room to fetch himself a glass of water. Sleeping soundly on the couch was Goku, his jacket pulled around him as he tried to sleep through the nightmares that were clearly plaguing him.

"Hakkai!" Gojyo had yelled, sprinting towards the other man's bedroom. "Come quick! Goku's home!"

Not a month later, Sanzo arrived at their door. They had finally all arrived back home safely. The ikkou was finally together again after many long years.

Gojyo had been the one to pull out the board. He'd set up the Mahjong tiles, and everyone got ready to play. However, when it came to Sanzo's turn, he stared blankly at the tiles, horror glinting behind his violet eyes.

"I've... I've forgotten how to play," he mumbled in shock.

The days progressed slowly. It was as though Sanzo's confession had robbed the game of all its pleasures from them.

Gojyo died six years later. The three men assembled at his funeral were solemn, as though they had all lost meaning in their world.

Sanzo followed next. He collapsed one day, fell unconscious, and just didn't wake up. Doctors said it was probably brought on by his smoking, though they weren't quite sure what it was.

Five years after that, Hakkai had been heading home when a beam from a building being constructed fell, and crushed his skull.

Goku had stood at the foot of their graves. During his ten year journey away from his friends, he'd realized that Hakkai had been right. Their time had ended. Their story had been told.

They were supposed to make a new story for themselves. They were supposed to find new lives. The problem was, no one in the ikkou could let go of their time on the road. It had been five years in comparison to the rest of their lives, but it had been their time. No one had been able to take that away from them. They had been heroes. Once.

Goku went home that night, alone. He hung himself in the basement of the house the four of them had shared.

The four winds then, fell silent.

* * *

**A/N: **The winds talked about in this story represent the places the players sit while playing Mahjong. East wind is always the 'banker'. They're the person that starts the game, along with other things. I know that Goku doesn't always play as East, but I figured for the story, he kind of had to be.

Thank you for reading, and I hope you enjoyed.


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